From Nokia World 2010: Bravo Anssi! Encore!
By The Prodigal Fool, published on 14 September 2010
“The N8 is a multimedia powerhouse” belted out Anssi Vanjoki as he wrapped up his keynote at this morning’s opening plenary at Nokia World. That may be true. But having just left the plenary hall, our first thoughts are not to brave the crowds now queuing up to get their hands on the new Nokia devices but rather to salute this very special orator. The N8 may well be Nokia’s multimedia powerhouse, but Vanjoki is surely its keynote powerhouse.
By turns funny, impassioned and sometimes downright aggressive and scary, Vanjoki delivered a keynote address that left no one in doubt that Nokia is on the verge of losing one of its most talented spokespeople – if not executives.
His first outburst came early on when he raised his voice to almost scary levels to emphasise that the days of fragmentation are over for the developer community. You no longer have to customise your apps to different devices. With Nokia’s Qt developer tool, you develop once and the apps run on most Nokia smartphones.
Vanjoki then moved on to berate critics who had, after just a glimpse of the N8 dashboard, declared it too similar to previous versions of Symbian. Reminding them of the value of retaining the familiar while you innovate, he mocked them for being like car critics passing judgement on a new Mercedes without even taking it out for a test-drive. “That’s why we’ve brought plenty of N8s to Nokia World, they’re waiting for you; go out and test drive them!” he shouted. We recoiled a little, thoughts of our old headmaster in our minds, wanting to meekly point out that “it wasn’t us Sir.” He’d made his point though.
But we don’t want to leave you with the impression that Vanjoki only has a bad cop routine in his repertoire. Moments like these were just punctuation marks in a speech that was otherwise warm, impassioned and – intentionally or not – very humorous.
When he pulled out the new C6 from his pocket, he declared “oh look it comes in a stylish leather pouch!” as if he were discovering it along with us for the first time.
When telling the audience about the C7’s new Clear Black Display, he enunciated the CBD acronym relentlessly (reminding us of a French teacher we used to have) before, amusingly, declaring that the black on these displays was “blacker than black”. He then off-footed some in the audience by saying that the screens were also green – by way of a bridge to talking about Nokia’s CSR initiatives.
Vanjoki’s most impassioned discourse was reserved for the new E7 though, a device that he predictably likened to the original Nokia Communicator and the E90. Although showing a clip of Val Kilmer in The Saint was ill-advised (it served only to remind us of how long ago it was that Nokia ruled the smartphone roost and how ridiculous Kilmer looked in his various disguises in that film), nothing could dampen the pride Vanjoki obviously felt and which we, the audience, couldn’t help being infected with too. The E7 is a great looking device and with its physical keyboard and impressive camera may have enough appeal to rob Cupertino of a few iPhone sales. Whether it really is a worthy Communicator successor we’ll have to wait and see.
So, to our eyes, Nokia released some devices with real potential here at Nokia World this morning – and stay tuned to The Prodigal Guide, we’ll be giving you our thoughts on each shortly – but the real star of the show and one who regrettably is on his way out was Vanjoki himself.
Bravo Anssi! Encore?
From Nokia World 2010: Bravo Anssi! Encore!
“The N8 is a multimedia powerhouse” belted out Anssi Vanjoki as he wrapped up his keynote at this morning’s opening plenary at Nokia World. That may be true. But having just left the plenary hall, our first thoughts are not to brave the crowds now queuing up to get their hands on the new Nokia [...]
5 Responses to “From Nokia World 2010: Bravo Anssi! Encore!”
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Thanks, Dean. Those typos should be fixed now. One of the perils of trying to knock a post out between sessions and without an editor…
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[...] C6 seems to be designed with women in mind (Nokia’s Anssi Vanjuki admitted as much in his keynote saying that “it fit perfectly in a pocket or a handbag”). The C7 is the C6’s ever so slightly [...]
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From Nokia World 2010: Thoughts on the Nokia E7 « The Prodigal Guide
14 September 2010
[...] the amazing hardware, there’s a huge amount to like on the software front too. When Anssi Vanjoki told delegates this morning that they needed to “test-drive” Symbian 3 before making any judgements, he had a fair point. [...]
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The devil is in the detail: Nokia E7 delayed « The Prodigal Guide
14 December 2010
[...] our view, there were two stars at Nokia World back in September: the first was departing executive Anssi Vanjoki. The second? Espoo’s new flagship communicator, the [...]
Dean
14 September 2010
A few spelling errors at the end including N7 and some guy names Vanjanki. Thanks for the post though.